A Formal Definition of AMDL.

Abstract

Since the introduction of ISP, the use of hardware description languages (HDLs) has increased dramatically. Used originally to describe at the programming level the instruction sets of digital computers, hardware descriptions are now being used in applications such as design automation, emulation, compiler generation, and program verification - to name only a few. This surge of activity has put the existing HDLs to the thorough test, with each application area making its own set of demands on the languages. One common demand, however, is for a precise definition of the HDLs themselves. AMDL is an abstract form of the hardware description language ISPS. This report presents a formal definition of AMDL, using the techniques of denotational semantics as developed by Scott and Strachey. AMDL includes some nonstandard control and data structures which are easily handled by this definitional method. This report assumes familiarity with descriptive denotational semantics.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1979
Accession Number
ADA078035

Entities

People

  • Peter W. Alfvin

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

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Communities of Interest

  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Application Software
  • Arithmetic
  • California
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Digital Computers
  • Environment
  • Equations
  • Formal Languages
  • Information Science
  • Instruction Set Architecture
  • Instructions
  • Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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  • Computer Engineering
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Theoretical Analysis.